Movie review: James Franco loses himself in the best of ways in ‘The Disaster Artist’

Monday

Nov 27, 2017 at 7:29 AMNov 27, 2017 at 7:29 AM

Ed Symkus More Content Now

I am not a midnight movie guy. Though, many years ago, I somehow made it through one of those interactive screenings of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” I would much rather just watch a movie, rather than throw toast and toilet paper at it. Nor am I fan of badly made movies, such as the inane “Rocky Horror” or the embarrassingly awful “Plan 9 from Outer Space.”

So, the 2003 film “The Room,” which failed fantastically, but eventually made it to cult classic status, was never on my radar. I’d never heard of it till finding out that James Franco’s newest film — he directed and stars in it — was a sort of dramatized look at the making of “The Room,” which was the creation of a fellow named Tommy Wiseau, who showed up in California one day, driving a Mercedes, speaking in an unrecognizable accent, leaving a word or two out of his sentences, and believing that he could be an actor, then later on, an actor-writer-director.

Franco’s film, in which he plays the badly dressed, scraggly haired, very mysterious Wiseau, starts off as if it were a straight documentary, featuring brief, talking heads sequences of familiar Hollywood folks, each one singing the praises of Wiseau’s “genius.” Then we’re plunged into the real-life events of July, 1998, when Paul McCartney met John Lennon ... no, that’s not right ... when 19-year-old struggling wannabee actor Greg Sestero (Dave Franco) met fearless wannabee actor Tommy Wiseau at a San Francisco acting class, where neither of them fares well, but where Greg is fascinated by Tommy’s absurd bravado, approaches him, and begins a friendship that survived plenty of rough waters, and culminated in “The Room.”

The lonely, fish-out-of-water Tommy, who never talks about his past or his age or his seemingly endless supply of money, takes to the idea of having a pal and manages to become both a hungry student of and a mentor to wide-eyed, movie-mad Greg.

A Mercedes ride down to Los Angeles sets up some goals, all of them revolving around getting into the acting business. Greg finds an agent, but not much work. Tommy finds that people don’t know how to react to his bizarreness. He also realizes, after an uncomfortable but funny encounter with Judd Apatow (one of many people playing themselves in this film), that he has approximately equal amounts of talent and social graces, both of them being at very low marks. It’s one of those points where Tommy’s lack of speaking skills stands out, as he sadly tells Greg, “Maybe I don’t have what it take,” followed by, “Nobody like me.” Soon after, it’s Greg, tired of not getting calls from his agent, who blurts out to Tommy, “I wish we could just make our own movie.”

Did you see the lightbulb that just went off over Tommy’s head? And so, in June, 2002, his notion of a script complete, a cast of unsuspecting actors and a crew with no clue of what they’re in for lined up at the set, Day One of a projected 40-day shoot commences, and this film about a film kicks into cringingly funny gear, with Tommy playing the lead of Johnny, and Greg in the second lead as Mark.

Things don’t go well, then continue to worsen. By Day 25 out of 40, everyone involved — except the confident Tommy — is sure that Tommy has no idea of what he’s doing. Tension develops, increases and, in the fast-moving, almost giddy script by Scott Neustadter and Michael J. Weber, gets funnier. And then it’s Day 52 of 40.

It’s a crazy, fascinating, absolute wreck of a story, and it takes exquisite shape under the direction of James Franco, whose best effort at directing before this was 2013’s “Bukowski.” But it’s his acting that’s going to earn kudos here. It’s his finest, most all-encompassing, but very different sort of work since he brilliantly lost himself in “Pineapple Express” and “Spring Breakers.” In capturing the persona of Tommy Wiseau, Franco adds in some flavoring of Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat to that of the peculiar Wiseau. In the end, Franco is as unrecognizable as his character’s accent. Speaking of the end, don’t dare to leave the theater until the end credits have rolled.

— Ed Symkus writes about movies for More Content Now. He can be reached at esymkus@rcn.com.